Amazon Categories and Attributes

Overview

Amazon offers a wide range of Categories and Attributes to help you effectively list and categorize your products.

• Categories determine where customers can find products while browsing the marketplace. These categories cover various product types, such as electronics, clothing, home goods, and more. 
• Attributes are specific details about a product that help customers understand its features, specifications, and characteristics, such as size, color, material, brand, model number, and more. 

Once you have Integrated Amazon into Sellercloud, you can seamlessly manage existing listings, as well as create new ones. One of the requirements for you to be able to Post Products on Amazon is to:

1. Select a Product Category for each product.
2. Configure the Required Attributes, which may vary depending on:
   1. The selected product category.
   2. The product’s Fulfillment Type.
   3. The product type – regular or Variation Parent/Child.

Sellercloud not only enables you to set these up for one or multiple products simultaneously but can also help make this process faster and easier with Attribute Defaults.

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Prerequisites

To be able to manage Amazon attributes from Sellercloud, enable the following Client Settings:

• Enable Amazon SP Listings API – Allow Sellercloud to update Amazon using the Selling Partner Listings API.
• Enable Amazon SP API Product Attributes – Allow Sellercloud to update Amazon attributes using the Selling Partner API.
• Enable Country Of Origin On Product Home Page – Show the Country Of Origin field on the Product Details Page.

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Attribute Defaults

Sellercloud allows you to map the required product attributes for each product category to product property fields, Custom Columns, or even custom static values, making product attribute preparation much easier. 

While it’s not required, ideally, you should configure the attribute mapping before you start configuring your products’ attributes. Sellercloud will use your mapping to pre-fill some attribute values when you configure them.

To map Amazon attributes:

1. Go to Company Settings.
2. Click Toolbox and select Amazon > Attributes Mapping.
3. Click Edit.
4. Select the category and an option from the Required Attribute Type. The page will show you which fields are required for that category for that type of product so that you can map them.
   
5. There are 3 options for mapping attributes – you can: 
   1. Map an attribute to a regular Sellercloud field using the Sellercloud Field column.
   2. Map an attribute to a Custom Column, also using the Sellercloud Field column. Custom columns are in the bvc_Product_Properties_UserDefined table.
   3. Use the Custom Value column to set a static value for that attribute. 
6. Click Save.

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Configure Categories and Attributes

The Amazon categories you assign to products determine what product attributes will have to be configured.

You can set the Amazon Category individually for each product on the Amazon Properties page or for multiple products at once with a Bulk Product Update using the AmazonProductType and  SK_ProductType columns in your template. The expected values for a bulk update are the same as those in the web user interface. Refer to the list below for all Amazon categories as of this article’s Updated date.

You can configure your products’ categories and attributes individually or in bulk.

Individually

To configure a single product:

1. Go to the Product Details Page.
2. Click Toolbox and select Amazon > Amazon Properties.
3. Click Edit.
4. In the Listing Details panel, click the icon to the right of Configure Attributes.
   
5. Select the product’s Category.
6. Optionally, you can check Show Required Attributes Only to display only the essential attributes needed to post the product and hide all other attributes.
7. Populate the List Values fields for each attribute. Additionally, you can:
   1. Hover over the blue information icons under the Field Title column to display tooltips with attribute descriptions.
   2. If you have set up Attribute Defaults, you can click the Reload Default Value icon to the right to load the attribute’s default value from there. Otherwise, it will load the value from the corresponding field on the Product Details Page. This may be helpful in case you’ve changed any of the product properties after saving the attributes.
      
      Changes made to properties on the Product Details Page after attributes have already been configured are not automatically reflected on the Amazon Attributes page. You must use the Reload Default Value action instead. For example, let’s take the UPC. When you save the attributes for the first time, it will save the product’s UPC to the attributes as the External Product ID attribute. If you then modify the product’s UPC, it will not save that updated value to the attributes.
   3. Use the search on the top right to look for specific attributes.
   4. Click the Download JSON icon on the top right to download a .json file with the product’s attributes.
   5. Click the download icon next to the Category field to re-download the Attributes from Amazon. You can perform this action only if you have selected a specific category, and it lets you ensure you have the most recent and accurate list of attributes for your SKUs category in case Amazon has made changes.
      
      
8. After completing the required attributes, click Save & Validate to validate your entries and check if any new fields are required. 
   1. If new fields are required, complete them and click Save & Validate.
   2. If no new required fields are returned, click Save and Close.
9. Click Save.

In Bulk

Since attributes are category-specific, you must bulk-update the categories first, and then you can proceed to bulk-update the attributes. 

To configure multiple products at once:

1. Follow the steps to Bulk Update Products using the column header for categories: SK_ProductType. See the beginning of this section for a full categories list. Once the Queued Job is complete, proceed to the next steps to configure the product attributes.
   
   After setting the categories, you can import attributes directly from existing Amazon listings with the Get Info From Amazon action. However, note that this action may not import all required attributes.
2. Go to Catalog > Manage Catalog.
3. Find and select the products you want to export.
4. Click the blue Actions icon in the bottom right.
   
5. Select Export Channel Info.
6. Select Amazon Attributes and click Export.
   
7. A Queued Job will be created. To open it, click the link at the bottom of the page.
   
8. Once the queued job is completed, you will receive a Notification. You can click the Download File button to download the exported spreadsheet with attributes. Alternatively, you can refresh the queued job page and then click the Download icon to the right of the Output File field.
   
9. Update the spreadsheet by entering attribute values under the FieldValue column.
   
10. Go to Catalog > Tools > Import Product Info.
11. Select Import Amazon Attributes.
12. Click File and select the updated file.
13. Click Import.
    

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Related Client Settings

The following Client Settings related to Amazon listings management are available:

• Enable Amazon SP Listings API – Allow Sellercloud to update Amazon using the Selling Partner Listings API.
• Enable Amazon SP API Product Attributes – Allow Sellercloud to update Amazon attributes using the Selling Partner API.
• Enable Country Of Origin On Product Home Page – Show the Country Of Origin field on the Product Details Page.
• Enable Convert Amazon Attributes To Product Specific – Show the Convert Amazon Attributes to Product Specific action on the Manage Catalog page. When you use the action, your Amazon Attributes will convert to the eBay Item Specifics format and apply in the corresponding fields.

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